About the Trust Project

The Trust Project

About the trust project

The Trust Project is an international consortium of news organizations collaborating to create standards of transparency in journalism with the goal of building a more trustworthy and trusted press. Led by award-winning journalist Sally Lehrman, it is hosted by Santa Clara University's Markkula Centre for Applied Ethics. Search engines and social media platforms, which have become important news distributors, are participating as external partners.

We apply a user-centered design process. Based on dozens of in-depth interviews with a diverse spectrum of public voices, news executives involved in the Trust Project identified and designed a system of “Trust Indicators” — that is, standardized disclosures about the news outlet, the journalist, and the commitments behind a story—to make it easy for the public to identify trustworthy news. Digital platforms, such as Google, Facebook, Bing, and Twitter, can use the Trust Indicators and the machine-readable signals associated with them to surface trustworthy news to their users.

Ethics Statement

FourFourTwo takes you behind the velvet rope into football’s inner sanctums. We tell you the sport’s best stories, using our unparalleled access to the world’s best players, managers and experts. Sourcing our material from a global network of writers, we bring you the stories you didn’t know that you didn’t know.

FourFourTwo is committed to bringing you the best in football. We have no interest in dragging our favourite sport through the dirt. We may chuckle at its inconsistencies, and occasionally we will challenge its weaknesses as we see fit, but football is the world’s most popular sport for good reason. We are here to celebrate, not denigrate. We pride ourselves on our editorial independence and integrity.

Diversity Policy

FourFourTwo takes the inclusiveness of its journalism seriously - football is a passionate sport, but one that requires respect for different viewpoints. Race, class, generation, gender and geography all affect those points of view. Reflecting these differences in our reporting leads to better, more nuanced coverage, and a better-informed football community. Being an equal opportunities employer is vital to our success, working with talented minds from all corners of the sport’s community. In line with that aim, we want, and work hard to ensure, diversity in our management and reporting staff.

Corrections Policy and Practice

FourFourTwo is committed to letting you know when an error has been made, the magnitude of the error and the correct information, as quickly as possible. That commitment to transparency applies to errors small and large, to short news summaries as well as our big investigative features: if you cannot trust us to get the small things right, how can you trust us on the big things?

If you think you've spotted an error, click on the feedback button. If that error is something you feel falls under the UK Editors' Code, you can make a formal complaint here.

Ownership Structure

FourFourTwo is owned by Haymarket Media Group, an independent media and information company, and is funded primarily through advertising.

We are proud of the brand's rich journalistic history, and of retaining our journalistic integrity. If a story on FourFourTwo has commercial involvement, you can be sure that it will say so clearly on the page. We are not in the business of deceiving you.

Ownership Mission Statement with Coverage Priorities

FourFourTwo is a global media football brand, aiming to tell the best stories from the world’s most popular sport. With a global perspective, unrivalled analysis and unparalleled access to the game’s stars, we cover football with depth and intelligence. We tell great stories with expertise and panache – and we have fun doing it.

Verification/Fact-checking Standards

FourFourTwo commits to do its best to publish accurate information. We take many steps to ensure accuracy: we investigate claims with skepticism; question assumptions; challenge conventional wisdom; confirm information with experts; and seek to corroborate what sources tell us by talking with other informed people or consulting documents.

We verify content, such as technical terms, stats, etc, against source documents or make clear who is providing the information. We may share relevant components of a story with a primary source or an outside expert to verify them. We stand by the information as accurate, and if it’s not, we will change it as quickly as possible and be transparent with our readers about the magnitude of the error.

We guide our journalists to ask the following questions when double-checking information in a quest for the truth: